Embracing Sadness

Okay... Before I get started I wanted to share a blog with you.... its one I consistently read...hope is blesses you and makes you think: http://www.jasonholdridge.blogspot.com/ The blog in particular is called "Merry Christmas, In God we Trust, and other mirages..." Wish I would have written it, but alas! My dear friend, Pastor J, beat me to it! *grin*

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Our christmas tree is beautiful... blue and white lights twinkle all over it...we got a little carried away with how many on on the tree, but once we had finished I thought maybe next year I would like to have a tree decorated solely with lights. Our living room is made up of dark gray walls, so at night the tree just glistens and the glass icicle ornaments glow with the lights as a backdrop. The best part is, though, that you can see the tree from the front window of the house...so if you were to drive up at night to visit us, you would park your car and see that blue and white tree..and well, I would just dare you to try to not be happy with all that twinkling and glistening.

But its 9:00am (a long ways off from the dark of evening) and I am sitting on the old orange thrfit store chair. Sawyer tired of chewing his squeaky fox toy and fell asleep behind me, so I am actually sitting on the edge of the old orange thrift store chair. The entry way is full of shoes and boxes of cds, clothes adorn the other chairs in my company, the kitchen table has papers piled up of things I need to deal with, and the kitchen cabinets (although sanded, sealed, and painted this week ) are in desperate need of touch-ups.

I have been up a couple of hours already... Sawyer had to pee around and so I got up and took him out...we were quite a site the two of us! I just threw my green coat over my pjs (which happened to be shorts and a tank top) and slipped on the closest pair of shoes (which happened to dressier ones) and he and I forged into our yard which was covered with frost. He didn't like the cold and neither did I, so (for once) he went quickly. On our way back in, it occurred to me that this is trash day..so I hurriedly took out the trash. Then I remembered its also recycling day... since my final trip outside, I have just been sipping my jasmine tee and staring at the christmas tree.

You know, in daylight without the lights on, it really loses some of its magic. In fact, it looks kind of funny to me now. The lights look like nothing more than green plastic cords and the silver and blue ornaments look a little cheap and out of place in the green boughs and the glass icicle ornaments have traded in their glow for a plain opaque look.

Its kind of sad.

I was reading in Proverbs yesterday and a verse stuck out to me "Hope deferred makes the heart sick". And as I sit here this morning, that verse is taking form...its jumping in and out of my mind...it feels real to me.

Shawn asked me last night how my blogging and writing has been going. I said "I haven't really been on it much" He asked why and I resorted to the "I-just-don't-have-anything-to-say" answer.

But that's not true. I do have something to say. Its just not something happy.

Hours and hours of last week in my life were consumed with reading through the Old Testament. I hungrily lapped it up. I read through the stories of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, Ruth, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon.... it was an amazing time for me as I rediscovered those stories and lives.... and yet,on this Friday morning with Christmas not long off, I am sad.

Does stillness ever have that effect on you? Sometimes when I get still and quiet (two things that do not come naturally to me) sadness sets in. THe busy nature of being an American is distracting. I am often 'busy' all day even with there is nothing to do...my mom says that when I was a toddler if I got bored I would just mess up my toys so that I would have to organize them again. Activity fuels me...I am starting to wonder what its really fueling in me, you know? Is it just keeping me distracted? Taking my attention away from my heart? Inoculating me so that I am immune to what's real?

The truth is that I have spent more time seeking God this week than I have spent focused on that alone in longer than I want to admit. And His Presence has been sweet to me...and yet my heart is sick...kind of like discovering that in daylight the christmas tree is little more than a dead tree with plastic decor.

Sickness of heart, the wise Solomon said, is the result of hope getting run over...beat down...taken out. His father, David, said "I would have despaired unless I had seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." I am chewing on those two things this morning....trying to give God my deflated hope...begging Him to show me His goodness in the land of the Living... I know that the popular Christian idea is that you shouldn't be sad..in fact, I know songs that say just that...but reading through the Old Testament this week has reminded me that the heroes of our faith dealt with doubt and fear and depression. They didn't make it their permanent address and live there, but they were acquainted with grief... Jesus was described as a man that way - a man familiar with sorrow and acquainted with grief.

My pastor says that no one would come to God except out of need. I think that's true. We live in a culture that medicates every symptom of needing God...a culture that wants to stop the ache or find some way to correct it. I wonder if that's why so many people are chronically depressed? so many people chronically isolated? chronically out of touch with their hearts?

I pray God will help us to be people who embrace joy and laugh with those who laugh...and also that we would embrace sorrow and cry with those who cry... that we would be still enough to feel how far from Eden we are..how much we have departed from our origin...that we would listen close enough to find out if our hearts have become sick and our hope destroyed.. we must embrace our desperate need if we are to find God..if we are to see His Goodness ..His moving.

I pray that we would be a people who embrace sadness..not so we can walk around gloomy and take on the Eeyore's persona and exclaim 'woe is me', but rather that we would embrace sadness so that it can lead us to a place of honesty and depth... a place where God can speak into the desperation of our lives.

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If you want, a group of us that numbers now over 100 are preparing to read through the Bible in 2006. We would love to have you along on the journey... if you are interested or curious you can email me @ engagethejourney.com We are setting up a website with message boards so that we can interact and discuss...read "an invitation" for more details.